


"If you can make an order could you get me one?"

by Creamteasforever



Series: Arabicus 'verse [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: AU, F/M, Fatlock, Food
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-02
Updated: 2014-08-02
Packaged: 2018-02-11 07:18:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2058966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Creamteasforever/pseuds/Creamteasforever
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That rare and strange beast, a Johnlolly fic. Nothing brings two hearts together like mutual jealousy and love, especially for a certain detective who can’t seem to look after himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	"If you can make an order could you get me one?"

**Author's Note:**

> Set quite specifically after “A Study in Pink”, with events reinterpreted and then sharply swerving from where the show went. I do seem to keep coming back to the opening, because “Sherlock” had the potential to be so many shows and the thought of all the ones we didn’t get interests me rather.
> 
> Enjoy!

After that moment when they’d first seen each other, with Sherlock on hand to dominate the room and separate them, Molly hadn’t yet run up against John Watson - St Bart’s was large enough that there was no real reason for their paths to cross. She’d suspected that John represented competition for Sherlock, consciously or not, and from a certain reticence about getting into a grudge match with a fellow doctor (a perfectly nice one to all accounts) she’d stayed out of his way. 

But today, for whatever reason, John had come down to the morgue himself; was in fact standing there twisting a stethoscope around in his hands, and looking a little lost without his other half. 

Don’t be silly, she told herself. They’re only flatmates. And given Sherlock’s utter inability to take a hint when it regards him and romantic prospects, that may not be much of an advantage. You’re not quite out of the running yet. 

"Erm…hullo. I was just wondering if I could ask you a question or two…"

"About Sherlock?"

He looked properly amazed at her statement of what must, after all, be well obvious. No wonder Sherlock had taken up with him, Molly thought; it’d doubtless do wonders for the ego, having that awed, genuinely impressed smile turned on every time you said something brighter than “bless you” or “pass the salt”. She found herself warming towards him a little. 

"Yes. D’you know…well…if he’s well off or not? It’s only, you’re about the sole person who knows anything about him who I’d feel comfortable asking."

"I always assumed so," she said, frowning in surprise. "Mycroft - you’ve met Mycroft by now, haven’t you?"

"It happened. I didn’t realise we were a club."

"If he came to talk to me, he’d certainly want to talk to you…well, anyway, there’s a family estate in the country, I know that much. And you’ve seen that coat Sherlock wears. Must have cost him a thousand pounds or so, at least."

John opened his mouth. “Belstaff,” each said, simultaneously. 

They looked at each other’s clothes, the tacky woolen jumper peeking out from under his white coat and the bright pink waist just visible under hers, and started laughing together. 

"You’re not any more interested in fashion than I am, are you?" Molly said, still gasping for breath. 

"No. It’s really just Sherlock. I couldn’t care less about the subject otherwise," John admitted, grinning away. Then his face grew serious again. "But…I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but he does only has the one coat to wear anywhere. A lot of what he does we all pass off as deliberate eccentricity, but I wonder how much of it is simply him not having the money to do anything else."

"You think that the Belstaff was a gift? Family?"

"Maybe, or he bought it some time when he did have a bit more money. But I don’t think he does now. It’s the little things. He hates the Underground and won’t think of taking it, always walks or takes a bus to his destination."

"I stopped taking cabs for a bit after that first case you did together," Molly said wryly. She’d not yet gotten over being jealous that John was the one who tagged along to investigate the case. It could so easily have been her.

He wrinkled his nose in acknowledgement of the point. 

"Yes, but the thing is, he won’t spend money on transport if he can help it. And then there’s the whole business of him needing a flatmate at all. I mean, we both know and like him, but it does seem a little odd that someone as independent as he is was willing to take the risk on being penned up with someone else. Doubt I’d be there at all if he could afford the rent himself."

The man may have a point there. “I suppose…”

"Donovan at Scotland Yard said that they don’t pay him, I don’t even know if he gets expenses. He makes a bit solving small cases for clients, but not much from what I’ve seen so far."

Molly nodded. “He doesn’t take money from his brother. Mycroft let that slip when we were talking.” Because he’d been trying to get her to agree to unobtrusively funnel cash to Sherlock, a request that was so many different kinds of wrong she’d barely known where to start refuting it (“as though he wouldn’t notice? Or that he wouldn’t be upset at me manipulating my relationship with him like that? Or for that matter take it out on you for interfering with his life?”). Evidently the older brother had leaned from the experience and not tried the stunt a second time.

"Besides all of which," John concluded unhappily, "he won’t buy the milk. Or groceries. Or even order anything when we go to a restaurant - it honestly happens like that, I’ll be sitting there eating and he’s just nursing a cup of coffee and thinking out loud, intimidates the waiters into ignoring him. I’m worrying that’s why he doesn’t eat."

But he does eat, Molly thought, we have lunch together here at the hospital sometimes when we’re talking pathology (after recovering from the lipstick fiasco, she’d finally gotten the idea of socialising over food into Sherlock’s skull; it was her inability to get any further than shop talk about decayed livers, murder victims and alibis that was the frustrating part). 

Then the interpretation of events abruptly recast itself; somehow it’d become a regular ritual for him to hand her a plate and ask her to take it at the counter while he rushed off to talk to some brain surgeon or specialist definitely out of her area, which meant she paid for both their lunches with her employee discount. Sherlock always paid for his share afterwards, but as far as a nourishing, interesting lunch in Central London went it couldn’t possibly get much cheaper…and it’s always in exact change, she thought, as though he’s been careful to calculate how much he’s eating down to the pence. 

"Two sugars would be great," Molly murmured. 

"What?"

"Nothing." It still wasn’t conclusive evidence, but she told John about the lunches anyway, gaining a certain satisfaction from the fleeting expression of hurt on his face, as low an impulse as that was. Apparently she wasn’t the only jealous one here. 

But all he said was “What days of the week, then?” 

"Mondays and Tuesdays, usually. He was in fine spirits today. Said you’d had some good luck about your case with the canary-trainer, I heard all about it."

"Yeah, that was brilliant. Started off with this opera backstage drama that turned deadly - "

"Look, uh…" She didn’t want to say John, but Watson seemed a little too cold now, so she compromised by not saying his name at all. "I did just hear about it all from the person who solved the case, remember?"

"Well. Fine, then. Mrs Hudson always has us up for tea Saturday night, and I think that may be it as far as regular meals go. He has this tendency to go particularly moody on Friday nights. Plays his violin a lot and won’t talk to me, or goes into one of his sulky fits."

It’d genuinely not occurred to her that part of Sherlock’s irregular excitability and wild mood-swings might be a simple blood sugar problem, but she found it difficult to rule out now John had suggested it. “Are you saying he doesn’t eat much the rest of the time?”

"Not really, no. Mainlines coffee, that’s all. It’s at the point that I’m glad to keep the sugar bowl fully stocked, because at least then I know he’s having some calories." John sighed. "Yesterday I was keeping track of him for just this reason, and he didn’t eat anything all day. Not a sausage. He fell asleep on the settee that evening, I went off to find a blanket to cover him with and when I came back his stomach was roaring away. Sounded like a classroom demonstration of borborygmi. I can’t imagine how he didn’t awaken."

The image of John tucking in Sherlock was, despite everything, an oddly cosy and comforting one. Molly found her mind lingering on it, even as she spoke briskly. 

"Have you forgotten who we’re talking about here? Probably woke up, realises you’re standing over him and bound to ask questions or say something if he does anything at all except pretend to keep sleeping solidly. If there’s anything Sherlock does have, it’s a sense of dignity." She paused. "So you just let him sleep, then?"

"Course not. I ordered out pizza, took some of it to my room and left the box lying around. There were a couple of pieces gone when I got up the next morning. I didn’t mention it and he didn’t either."

"Well, that’s something."

"Suppose you’re right, though." He slumped against her corpse dissecting table, now thankfully scrubbed clean. "His dignity is exactly the problem here. Anybody else I could offer to help out a bit, give them a bit of cash to tide them over or suggest something, at least. Most of his lifestyle’s his and I don’t want to interfere with it too much, but he needs looking after."

"We want a double-pronged approach," Molly said calmly, surprised by the precision of the plan her mind had begun carefully working out over the conversation. "I can do my best to feed him up the days he lunches with me, start preparing more calorie-laden and intensive meals, while you begin making and leaving a lot of very rich food in the flat. You’ve got to impress upon him that you’ve developed a thrilling new cooking hobby, there’s suddenly way too much around, and it’s just going to rot if nobody eats it. So it’s in his best interest to help you finish it all, that way there’s room for the bits of dead bodies I give him to take home."

"There’s just one flaw in this brilliant plan. I can’t cook."

"I can’t either. But look, we made it through medical school and residency. How hard can it be?"

 

The answer was: pretty bloody hard, as it turned out. 

For one thing, Sherlock proved a frustratingly picky eater; wouldn’t touch a plate of brownies Molly baked herself that were the tiniest bit burnt on the bottom (a group of interns on the cancer ward were made very happy that night), plain ignored the curry takeout that John left invitingly on the counter (“John, they left out the cardamom pods. What is the point of a chicken tikka masala without cardamom?”)

For another, the more Sherlock and John went on cases - the number and fees of which were increasing, as the consulting detective’s fame grew - the more impractical cooking became, thanks to it always being interrupted. On top of John’s own discovery that cooking to his roommate’s standards was considerably more difficult then just knowing how not to burn water. After the fourth time that he’d tried to make a Yorkshire pudding and had it collapse/drown in the gravy/char into uneatable smokiness (Mrs Hudson had asked about why the fire alarm had gone off and been not so much offended as downright sorrowful after seeing the sad remnants), he called Molly almost in tears and said that it wasn’t working. 

"I’d swear he’s losing weight now just to spite me. Much more of this and it’s not going to be us two imagining things, he’s going to make himself sick or faint halfway through a case or something."

"Did you try the breakfast pastries? Fresh ones, every morning?"

"The whole last week, been buying them from the bakery down the street. You wouldn’t even believe how many chocolate croissants I’ve consumed, it’s not funny. I broke down and asked him about it yesterday, and he just said that he didn’t do breakfast, lots of people didn’t and why should he?"

At least someone was eating, Molly thought. Or two of them; her attempts to make rich, sustaining lunches, convincingly more palatable than the perfectly adequate and fairly tasty cafeteria food were taking a lot of experimentation. 

"Plan B. I’m moving in upstairs."

"Upstairs? But -"

"No one occupies 221C. I’ve been negotiating the rent with Mrs Hudson. Pricey but I can afford it. You’ll give me a character recommendation, I trust?"

"But of course. Though I hope Sherlock doesn’t get his back up about it."

"He won’t. Why would he care?" A level of bitterness had entered her voice, she had to admit; fond as she was of Sherlock, this whole business was getting absurd. Why was it so difficult to get him romantically interested?

Oh, it had been queerly painful when he’d examined her brownies - she’d found such a pretty blue china plate to put them on, too - picked one up, hefted the weight, sniffed at it even, and then dropped it again with a casual air and started discussing a peculiar colonoscopy fraud he’d heard about the other week. It was comic, almost - but didn’t they say that was next to tragedy?

"I know how that feels," John said quietly. "He…you know, if it makes you feel any better, he won’t be that way for me either. If you think it’s bad for you, imagine living in the same flat, watching him every day, wanting to touch, and he just simply won’t cooperate. And you don’t dare yourself, because it might drive him away for good and then you’d have nothing." A dry chuckle crackled over the phone line. "Sometimes he wanders around in nothing but a sodding bed sheet, complete bloody starkers underneath, and he acts as though there’s nothing the slightest bit abnormal about this. He just won’t admit to any sexual sensibilities."

Molly’s heart turned over in sympathy; John was right, maybe his position wasn’t so enviable. “Maybe he’ll wander upstairs when I move in,” she told him, with a half-laugh to put the necessary irony into the tone. “Annoy me for a while instead.”

She could hear the hint of a smile that’d crept into John’s face. “I’m going to hold you to that. Get rid of him when he’s being too much. Why do we put up with Sherlock? What do we go through this for, all this pain and worry?”

The pause that followed was a deliberate one, as she sought the right words. “Because he’s brilliant, and as clever as we both are, we’re not geniuses, we’re just attracted to one. Because he makes there be twice as much life in a room as it ought to have. Probably a certain nurturing instinct, wanting to cuddle and look after someone who deserves it that much and still needs as much help as he does.”

"Right as usual then, Molly. You have got a funny knack for explaining things the way I was thinking. But so much more understandably."

"You’re the one who gets me thinking that way," she said affectionately. "Hang on until the weekend, I’ll hire a moving van and come over to relieve you then."

"Thanks. Really, thanks. It means a lot to me, having you around. Sort of halves my worries, sharing them."

"Same here."

They chatted about other things - St. Bart’s, the next Arsenal fixture. They talked for a long time before hanging up. 

 

There was a certain amount of gossip amongst the circle of people who knew Sherlock intimately (well, knew enough to be on speaking terms with him) when Molly moved into Baker Street. It didn’t matter to her. Nobody who thought she was setting her cap at him was factually wrong as such, and as for the rest of what she was doing there..well. Nobody but her and John needed to know about that. 

Two heads proved better than one; Molly kept her visits downstairs sporadic, anxious not to overwhelm Sherlock (who only wandered up when specifically invited), but John came up often. For one, once Molly was done refurbishing the kitchen, the real fun started. They could cook anything they wanted up there, without fear of interruption - if John was called away on a case, Molly could always finish off a dish. 

They tried endless experiments, testing and altering, seeing what worked and what didn’t, smuggling the goods downstairs to keep the 221B kitchen fully stocked at all times. Sherlock, it turned out, would eat any sort of dessert dish if it had gooseberry in it - very well, Molly said, they’d buy out the supply of gooseberry at Spitalfields Market if necessary to get him eating. Everything was cooked in butter, the richer the better. He could be persuaded to eat most pastas (“of course he wouldn’t mind eating that, John, he thinks it’s cheap and easy”), so they prepared any number of variations, with the nicest, thickest creamy cheese sauces they could find. Molly invested in a selection of French cookbooks for the purpose, found more ideas in old Victorian recipes. 

John found that pork pies went very quickly, and proposed they try making a few. 

"Can we actually fit any more calories into a pork pie than there already are in a Melton Mowbray?" Molly asked. “That’s rather the point, I always thought.”

"Uh. More meat? More pork fat? That’s it - lard! Why don’t we use more lard than we do?"

"Brilliant. John, you’re wonderful." She’d kissed him on the cheek. John had simply grinned. 

The amount of lard they proceeded to stuff the Great Detective with over the course of the next few months probably would have made up an entire pig, Molly calculated idly. 

Slowly, slowly, their attempts started to work. Molly felt a bubbly, shivery delight the first time she saw Sherlock and saw his hands thickened out, too fleshy for the thin blue veins under the skin to be visible any longer. John took the steps two at a time one night to excitedly tell her the detective had definitely stopped losing weight, had in fact put enough on to cover his thin ribs. He wasn’t anywhere near fat yet, not even decently plump, but at least he was stabilising at something like normal. 

"It’s just a pity that we’re having so much of this food too," Molly commented a few days later, pulling down her biggest rolling pin from its wallhook to flatten out the bread dough. They’d made some chocolate tarts already; now they were busy with preparing loaves for the week. 

"A pity?" John inquired, as he pounded in a mortar. "Don’t see why. Best eating I’ve ever had in my life."

"Well, you know. Not everyone goes in for curves like I’ve developed now." More than curves, she thought ruefully. Definite heaviness, particularly around the rump. Not that it looked bad, as such - she rather enjoyed the way it looked in the mirror - but still.

"Better than me." John slapped his stomach, plump and now rotund with tasty tidbits they’d been snacking on for the whole hour. "If you have to put it into such terms. I personally think it’s rather attractive."

"You too?"

It’d slipped out. She’d not intended to say it. 

"Wait, you mean…I didn’t….we both…" John stammered, then put down his pestle and gazed at her. "We’ve both been feeding up Sherlock with the one end in mind, haven’t we?"

"To get him, if not fat, up to some sort of acceptable weight." Molly agreed, letting the rolling pin slide aside; she could do just as well kneading with her bare hands, perhaps better. They plunged through mounds of dough, soft and flour-coloured, so that it was hard to tell where the bread left off and she started. Her heart was beating rapidly, suddenly. 

"You know what I think?" John said gently, pulling her away from the floured board. "Hang Sherlock, is what. "

And suddenly, he was kissing her, hard and rapidly on the mouth, flour particles scattering through the air and fluttering on and around them like a blessing. Molly had kissed before, but never so pleasurably, certainly never with such conviction, so that she left handprints all over her lover’s jumper, pressing the full weight of her body against the equally sturdy heft of John’s.

"Maybe we don’t need brilliance after all," she growled breathlessly, kneading her hands into the small of his back. "Maybe we just need each other."

"Dear Molly of mine," he whispered back. "Clever, thoughtful Molly, always there, always laughing and thinking. Why didn’t I make love to you any sooner?"

"Shhh. Don’t talk any more."

What seemed a long, long time later, they had sunk to the floor in a pleasurable stupor, still dusty with flour and warm with fatigue, when there was a knock on the door. 

"Oh, come in if you like. It’s not locked," Molly called. Serve right whoever had come along to interrupt them at a time like this. 

It was, naturally, Sherlock. He was carrying a large white box on a tray, with noticeable care. 

"I thought I’d make a cake for the happy couple," Sherlock said awkwardly. He set it down on the counter, looked down at them and then hastily looked away again, apparently studying the peppercorn jar in great detail. "As, er. I thought you’d like it."

They looked at it. It was evidently not storebought - a distressing dryness to the crumbs spoke of a dry, low-fat mix left too long, and overly gooey frosting was bleeding everywhere. Much of it was leaking down into a gap in the back, where one neat, fairly large slice had already been taken out. 

"Enjoyed your piece, Sherlock?" Molly couldn’t help asking.

"Testing. The experts recommend making another cake with the same ingredients if you want to be pedantic, but I didn’t feel that was sufficiently certain. In case something went very wrong with the other cake but not the one I was eating. You see." He looked more and more troubled. "I suppose you’ll be moving in upstairs now, John? I’ll…well, I’ll miss you." The slightest hint of a quaver had entered his voice with the final phrase. 

"John," Molly said gently. "You’ve making Sherlock cry."

"I could say the same about you," John commented, carefully avoiding Molly’s gaze. She had a good idea he was thinking the same she was; that they’d be unable to stop laughing if they did make eye contact.

"Most certainly doing no such thing," Sherlock said tightly. "We’ve had a…well, we’ve had a good partnership, John, and I’ll be sorry to see the last of you - "

He broke off as the couple on the floor started sniggering. 

"Oh for heaven’s sake," Molly said. "If you want, you’ve only to join in. John and I would be glad to have you."

"Why - me? John, this wasn’t about Molly?" He still directed his comments towards his roommate, as though they were the only two in the room. 

"Oi!" she shouted. "I’m right here. You can talk to both of us."

"Quite so," John agreed. "Can’t have you talking around my girlfriend."

"So you’re not gay." Sherlock sneezed at a passing wisp of flour. 

"Good question. Molly, do you think I’m gay? I don’t think I’m gay."

"Not as such. Bi, now, probably."

"Poly, even."

"Polyamorous, if you’re that way inclined, Sherlock."

"I -"

"Now either go away or pipe down and try this dessert," Molly said. "We put hazelnuts and pecans in the topping."

And before the great detective, Sherlock Holmes, quite knew what he was about he was down on the floor and being cuddled between two warm, massive bodies at once and was being fed chocolate tarts that, he had to admit in the small corner of his mind that was still processing rational thoughts, were a great deal more gratifying and tastier than his sad attempt at chocolate cake.

It was not at all what he’d expected his evening to go like, but just for once he was delighted about having gotten a deduction completely, utterly wrong.

**Author's Note:**

> From what I can tell, nobody especially bothers with Johnlolly fics. They don’t have all that much to do with each other in canon, so fair enough. 
> 
> In the strange AU of ficcing however (all fics are AUs at heart), it’s not hard to see how they have similar interests. They’re in love with Sherlock, they both want to feed him up properly (well, it’s a Fatlock fic, that goes without saying), and they’re both medical professionals. I just made use of all those characteristics; this was originally going to be Sherlolly, as a treat for whatever anonymous denizen of the Fatlock community likes those, but the process of getting them to associate had to involve John somehow and he turned out to be a much more obvious partner... 
> 
> Which is fine. Sometimes it works out that way. I’m rather proud of how well this one turned out. 
> 
> Once I came up with the basic conceit, it was a surprise how easily you can reinterpret BBC Sherlock as flat broke, which is possibly why I keep doing it. The “two sugars” line is the keystone of the fic, as per the title.


End file.
